Currently, internet protocol television (IPTV) is delivered via a multicast architecture to the end customer. While this is one manner for delivering content to multiple parties, there are some limitations. One limitation with multicast to deliver IPTV video is “channel change” time. Specifically, the amount of time from when a user desires to switch the viewed television channel to when the user sees the content. In traditional IPTV networks, this is accomplished by sending an internet group management protocol (IGMP) join request upstream from the customer to the network. This IGMP join request would be processed and the multicast group joined and then forwarded to the customer. This process does take some amount of time, varying from about one to about three seconds. An alternative was developed in some emerging IPTV platforms to work around this issue. These new IPTV systems introduce a “fast channel change” capability to allow the user to have the video stream sent via unicast to the customer. While this does improve the channel change time, it increases bandwidth demand. Some IPTV systems may transmit this unicast stream for a set period of time to ensure the multicast stream was joined. During this period, which could vary from 15-30 seconds depending on the implementation, unicast streams are being sent to the customer. In a residential area, the constant changing of channels can produce a large number of temporary unicast streams. The event of having multiple customers request the same channel for a short period of time can have a bandwidth impact on the network capacity needs.